ready to defend the house.”
One grumbled an unintelligible response, slid his sword from its scabbard, and reluctantly straightened up. The other didn’t move.
Kata and her three companions were chatting happily, their mood a striking contrast to the sense of oppression caused by the carmine sky, the impenetrable shadows, and the swirling fog.
Clattersmash ignored the Servants, crossed the square, and entered one of the roads that led out of it. Clarissa and I trailed behind.
“Is this really necessary, Mademoiselle?” my friend asked. “Where are you taking us?”
“To a place where you’ll find the answer,” came the cryptic reply.
“The answer to what question?”
There was no response. She moved on.
We ran after her, turned a corner, and proceeded along a residential street, then, a few minutes later, entered a dingy passage. We rounded another corner, and another, until we were deep in the maze of narrow alleys that criss-crossed behind the city’s main thoroughfares.
Finally, Clattersmash stopped beneath a leaning tenement building and turned until her crow mask was pointing straight at us. Its tip was shaking. Tremors were running up and down the Yatsill’s body.
“You—” she began. “You must—must—must—”
Her head suddenly jerked backward. She screamed. Her hands flew up to the front of her jacket and the sharp fingers dug into the material and ripped it open. The jacket, and the waistcoat and blouse beneath, were torn asunder. She clutched at her mask and yanked it away. Her vertical mouth was spread wide, the inner beak gaping.
“My name is Mademoiselle Crockery Clattersmash!” she screeched. “And I am taken!”
Clarissa backed away, bumping into me. I pushed her aside and drew my sword.
The front seam of Clattersmash’s body cracked open as if being pushed apart from within. A knot of red, suckered tentacles swelled out from the widening gap. Her face sank into the hood-like shell of her head.
“Clarissa! Run!” I shouted.
Clattersmash collapsed onto the cobbles and a repulsive tangle of thrashing limbs bulged out of her. The carapace of her arms and legs turned semi-transparent as the inner flesh withdrew, sliding out, wet and glistening. A sickening thing of squirming appendages and pulsating organs rose from the wrecked Yatsill.
“I must feed,” it said, in guttural, bubbling Koluwaian. A dripping limb extended and pointed over my shoulder. “Then I must take that one to Phenadoor.”
I risked a quick glance back and saw Clarissa pressed against the side of the alley, her hand covering her mouth.
“I told you to run!” I yelled. “Get out of here!”
The Blood God—for, undoubtedly, that’s what the monster was—lunged forward, lashing out at me. Automatically, my blade went up and sliced through tentacles.
As it had before, my training guided my movements, but from the moment I engaged with the creature I knew that something was wrong. I had to kill it, that was plain, but I couldn’t. As it hit out at me again and again, my sword met and removed its limbs, yet I was incapable of striking a fatal blow. Disgust welled up within me; a hatred of the violence I was forced to do; a surge of utter abhorrence, not at the monster that faced me but at the one I’d become if I killed it.
My feelings weren’t real. I realised it immediately. As I ducked and dodged the thrashing appendages, carving at them with my blade, it was absolutely clear to me—for the first time—that my interior battle wasn’t interior at all. Since my arrival in New Yatsillat, my emotions had been manipulated from without. Something was preventing my natural recovery from the lingering shock and fear I’d felt at discovering Polly Nichols’ corpse and was, instead, accentuating and perverting the memory.
Of course I wasn’t Jack the Ripper! The very notion was patently absurd!
Smacking across my face, a limb ripped the flesh of my cheek and a squirming length of muscle slapped down onto my shoulder, curling over my back and around my waist. It ripped my jacket and shirt away and suckers latched on to my skin. I felt spines pierce my flesh. Instantly, as venom was injected, the strength drained out of me and I dropped to my knees.
Dimly, I saw that the Blood God possessed a skeletal structure. The front of it was exposed. I raised my sword and pressed its point against the creature. All I had to do was thrust the blade home.
Do it! Do it!
My arm shook, my vision blurred, Polly Nichols rose up and looked down at me, her intestines looping to the ground, the gashes in her throat mouthing